When a company or a person decides to have an online presence or other internet based project they will use a service called web hosting. It is a service that allows organizations and individuals to post their website or web content on the internet and is often provided as part of a general internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.

Free hosting deals are great for those who want to ‘dip their toes in the water' for example but the range of services available to them will be limited. When a person realizes they want to host additional sites and store other digital products, they may find that the range of facilities for unpaid web hosting plans is too limited.

In the early days you may be quite happy to have your files on a server which is shared by many others while you try their hosting services. It is usually possible to upgrade to have a dedicated server for your files once you know the service provider is reliable; there is normally an additional charge for this facility. You need to have a registered domain to have a web hosting package otherwise files, websites and other digital information cannot be stored or accessed.

Another advantage of web hosting and your own domain name is that email addresses will include your own domain name and not that of those free providers such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to name a few of the thousands of providers whose services can be used. If you have a business presence online you cannot afford to have another company's name at the end of your own e.g. www.yourcompanyname.hostingcompany.com when it should really look like this: www.yourcompanyname.com. The amount of data that is viewed on your site each time someone accesses it is called bandwidth; it is an extremely important aspect to consider and the main reason why buying the cheapest hosting package is not always best.

This point becomes more important when you have a site that provides large video, audio and image files to its visitors as all of these use up the bandwidth you have been allocated as part of your package. Some people and web hosting companies decide to become their own web host but this is not recommended as the security issues involved are huge unless you are proficient in this area, it is something to be avoided.

Francisco Segura owns and operates
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Regression Testing Software

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